I'm a husband, father, author, cyclist, sailor, travel addict, and former Silicon Valley software engineer. I've written 3 books and actively review books on this blog.
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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

In between bouts of learning Adobe InDesign, I've been helping a few engineers negotiate compensation. One of the strangest things I ran into at Google was a number of people telling me that they didn't care about their career path, their compensation, or something like that. This was usually used to justify their apathy towards promotion systems, or to justify taking on an assignment that they knew would not help their career.

Coming from an engineer towards the end of that career, I can understand that attitude. If you're in your 50s or 60s, an extra promotion might not matter very much: after all, any additional compounding effect on your income will be dwarfed by matters such as job-satisfaction, or even such fringe benefits as health insurance.

For young engineers, however, that attitude is ridiculous and stupid. First off, an incremental 15% raise at this point in your career will compound over the next 4 decades if you're in your 20s. This makes a difference of a few million dollars. Secondly, as anyone who has bought an expensive luxury item knows, spending more on something makes you value it more. There are very few people who would bad-mouth their recently-bought expensive BMW or MacBook, for instance. (Yes, and I'm aware that I am one of those who would bad-mouth something I just bought, but I'm weird that way)

One engineer I advised got a substantial counter-offer from his current employer. After the counter-offer (but before he accepted it), he mentioned that his manager and tech-lead started treating him differently. This was a natural effect: once he got his counter, he started being too valuable to spend doing crappy work and writing unit tests: he'd have to be put to work doing more highly leveraged activities. A few more cycles of this, and he'd have enough work to justify a promotion, and a virtuous cycle will start.

So even if my book doesn't make you want to work at a startup, interviewing around to seek your market value is very likely to pay off, not just in terms of compensation, but in other intangibles as well, such as job satisfaction, or just getting out from doing work you don't want to do. It always surprises me that talented engineers put up with an unsatisfying job: the Valley is as hot as I've ever seen it, and it's currently a seller's market for engineering talent. If you don't take advantage of the situation now, another such situation may not arise for another 5 years.

7 comments:

Speaking of jobs in the valley. What new companies do you think look like good places to work?

I've been thinking that Yelp looks kind of interesting, as I've heard they use Python heavily, and they look like they have something resembling a business model. I live up in Seattle though and am not really in the loop in terms of what all the new Silicon Valley startups are.

Obviously, the social networks (Facebook/LinkedIn) are growing fast an incredibly profitable. So are the social games (I know I was surprised when I heard the numbers).

Yelp is also potentially interesting. The only way to get into Silicon Valley is to visit and meet lots of different people. Xianhang took a very aggressive approach to it, and I think it's paying off in spades.

Interesting perspective. I usually advise young engineers to ignore differences in compensation and focus on their career path.

Why should compensation be ignored (within reason)?

(1) You're rarely comparing apples to apples. What if one company offers bigger annual bonuses, raises, etc? Or one company is in a more expensive location? (Yes, you can take these into account - but you don't always have all information necessary.)

(2) The amount that you learn in the long run will make a bigger difference in your career development, which will in turn impact your career more.

I talk to many candidates who want to turn down a role at Google or Facebook for a slightly higher paid role at a big, stagnant company. They need to think long term, not short term.

15% cannot be ignored. That's what I tell people. My first job switch resulted in a 30% raise. If you're talking 5%, sure, a better work environment or a better career path is worth 5%. 30%? 300%? Nothing makes up for that.